I’ve been in love twice in my life. I married one and spent most of my late teens / early twenties dreaming about marrying the other.
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This week, Yoga class was all about camel pose. The open-heart pose. My classmates and I held it for a while and afterward, as we pulled out of it, I was very emotional. It got me thinking about how often I really have opened up. How often I’ve fallen in love. I should re-phrase that…how often I’ve let myself fall in love. For fear of getting hurt I have built walls up. The problem is these walls didn’t keep the hurt out. Pain took a grappling hook, climbed my walls and captured me anyway.
I can’t help but wonder if I’ve kept myself from great experiences. Have I missed out this entire time?
In high school I was determined not to be locker room talk. To make sure that didn’t happen, I didn’t date anyone from my high school. I had some big crushes and a couple of them found out, but other then flattering them and keeping me in crushing status nothing happened.
Outside of high school, through a church program, I did meet a boy that I liked. We tried to date. It was right before the summer in 1996 and I had planned on working at the carwash in town for the summer. I had just gotten hired and was talking to the boy I was dating. He was asking me questions about my new job. I would be working at the carwash doing everything but maintenance work. I’d prep the cars, dry them off, cashier, towels just about anything you could imagine. I would also be the only girl that worked there, beside the owner’s daughter who wasn’t old enough to technically have a job.
My date didn’t approve of my new job. Not because of the actual work itself but because I’d be working with all guys. He told me I was forbidden to work there. I couldn’t be with someone so controlling when we had only been on two lunch dates and kissed just as many times. Who was he to tell me where I could and couldn’t work? It ended at that conversation and I never looked back.
I spent the summer after my senior year dating the twin of a crush I had had for years. Shortly after this caper I would fall in love for the first time.
After a summer of doing whatever I wanted, I got a bartending job at night and started going to school in the day. It would be nearly impossible to forget that morning in October, the day I knew I would fall in love. I woke up and I just knew, like I knew I was alive, that I would fall in love. While I was brushing my teeth I realized just how many people I see during the day and thought about how any one of them could be the one and I would never even know. Before my teeth were clean my gut informed me that I would know when he came around.
School was uneventful that day. So uneventful that I actually forgot what happened earlier that morning. In fact, I didn’t even remember it at all until about 11 o’clock that night. There was one customer in the bar. A woman that was a regular attendee, she drank Rum and Diet Cokes almost nightly. My co-worker was keeping her company while I cleaned up the bar and grill area. When the door opened I had my back to it. My breath became short and I felt light headed. I couldn’t tell what was wrong with me. I was going to ask my coworker and regular to help me to a seat when I turned around and saw him.
Everything they say about love is true. The butterflies, the time stops, slow motion and shaky hands. It is all true. With shaky hands I asked to see his id, partially because I wanted to know everything about him and partially because I needed to make sure he was old enough to drink.
We hit it off right away. He was in a band and worked at a recording studio, which was great considering music was a huge part of my life. Him and his co-worker invited me back to the studio to check out his band. Their cd was fresh off the press. I wasn’t going to go, but I couldn’t find a good reason not to. Fate placed us together that day right. I knew it was going to happen, I couldn’t cut the meeting short and besides…I had to drive past the studio to get home, I might as well stop for a couple minutes.
A couple of minutes that night turned in to a couple of hours and stopping by or having them come up every time I worked. I fell more and more in love with each second I spent with him.
Eventually we would date. Eventually he would break my heart. Eventually I would give up and move on. Eventually took years.
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I’ve known my husband almost my whole life. His dad and my dad were best friends growing up and his mom and my aunt are best friends to this day. The fear of meeting the parents didn’t exist. It was comfortable. I had dated a lot of guys before that always said, “I don’t want a girlfriend” but the true meaning of that was, “I don’t want you to be my girlfriend”. The truth is most of those guys got relationships right after they would say that to me. I had put up with it for far too long. My now husband wasn’t one of those guys to me. I’m sure he’s told some girl somewhere that he didn’t want a girlfriend, but he never said that to me.
Our love was different from my first love. It was a love that wasn’t sudden and unknown we grew it and cared for it together. We’ve been married eight years this September.
I can’t help but think the barriers I put up around my heart so I wouldn’t get hurt have prevented me from experiencing some of what love has to offer. Even now, being married, I’m not entirely sure the barriers have collapsed. It’s very possible I’m still holding myself back from feelings I could have.
The problem with barriers is they don’t work. They don’t keep out the pain and hurt of heartache. Loving with all abandon is better than holding back and loving guarded. The pain will hurt regardless and there isn’t anything you can do to stop it if it’s going to happen.
I couldn’t agree with this perfect quote: 
We are made of love. That camel pose opened my heart to feel it. Now I choose to love with reckless abandon. This Valentines day, Love like you’ve never been hurt.
Much Love,
Jes xoxo